1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a human resource management system. More specifically, this invention relates to a human resource management system for performing substitute fulfillment, compiling absence and entitlement information, notifications of unexpected events, schedules, instructional information, and notifications of benefits and policies.
2. Background Information
To date, locating a substitute to fill a temporary employee absence in an organization, a process referred to as “substitute fulfillment,” has generally been an unreliable, labor-intensive, and often panic-driven process. In any organization, the absence of a worker can have tangible consequences throughout the workplace. The effects of an employee absence vary with the nature of the work environment and with the scope of the employee's position. For example, upcoming deadlines and patterns of absenteeism can have different consequences within a particular organization. These consequences may be immediate and drastic, as when an assembly line shuts down due to the absence of a critical worker on the line or an airline pilot is not able to report to duty, or more attenuated and moderate, as when another employee is distracted from his primary task to answer telephones due to the absence of the office receptionist. These consequences may also include diversion of management resources to address the consequences of the absence; delays in accomplishing projects in which the absentee has a role; displacement of other employees who must fulfill the absentee's role, either by express assignment or in order to complete their own tasks; reduced productivity; fines levied against the organization, particularly if the absence impacts safety or other government-regulated aspects of the work environment; and, in an extreme but not uncommon case, the inability to complete the central task of the organization.
In the latter case, assignment of a substitute worker is imperative or “mission-critical” —without the substitute worker, the mission of the organization will not go forward. In this instance, filling the vacancy with a temporary substitute is the only acceptable alternative. In other cases, assignment of a substitute worker may not be mission-critical, but may nevertheless be a preferred policy in order to minimize the consequences of any absence. As a result, an upcoming absence may impact the workplace even before the absence period begins, as managers consider ways of compensating for the absence. Examples of work environments in which substitute fulfillment may be a mission-critical task include schools, emergency services, security services, airlines, and manufacturing plants, particularly plants with an assembly-line operation. The substitute of an absent teacher with a substitute teacher is a commonly occurring example of a mission-critical substitute-fulfillment objective.
Thus, when an employee notifies the organization that the employee will be absent, in an organization where a substitute is necessary or desired, management must necessarily turn its attention to the substitute fulfillment task or risk a noticeable reduction in the productivity of the organization or an inability to accomplish the business of the organization for the entire absence period. Although seemingly simple in concept, the substitute fulfillment task is non-trivial, requiring managers to devote significant time, effort and other resources, with no guarantee of success. The number of intermediate tasks that must be accomplished and constraints that must be satisfied to successfully realize a particular substitute in a timely manner complicates substitute fulfillment.
The absent worker often provides notice of his or her impending absence less than a day, or even only several hours, before the worker is expected at work. Thus, management typically enters the substitute fulfillment task with little time to carry it out. Should there be no automation of the process in any aspect, then management must direct each step of the process.
Once the absence, which may extend from only hours to several days, or even months, is known, management must typically identify the scope of the absentee worker's critical responsibilities and skills to establish criteria for identifying a suitable substitute and develop a substitution candidate profile. Typically, multiple substitution candidate profiles may be established, with more demanding requirements for ideal or preferred substitutes, and with less demanding, threshold requirements for merely acceptable substitutes. Once the appropriate qualifications for an acceptable substitute are established, management may consider potential substitutes from a prepared list of candidates, or alternatively, management may identify potential candidates by some other means. Candidates may be regular employees of the affected workplace, for example, assembly line workers at a manufacturing plant who work different shifts from the absentee, or, persons from outside the workplace, for example, substitute teachers registered with a school district.
Management must then contact potential substitutes, typically by telephone, and determine whether potential substitutes are available and willing to work at the desired times in the desired position. Merely reaching potential substitutes may require several attempts. In the best case, management will eventually locate and assign an available substitute to cover the vacancy. In the worst case, management will be unable to find a substitute, despite having expended significant resources on the substitute fulfillment task. The substitute fulfillment task is substantially, but not wholly, complete when the available substitute is assigned. Typically, management performing the substitute fulfillment must then notify the appropriate persons that a substitute has been confirmed to facilitate inclusion of the substitute in the workplace. Due to the complexity of the substitute fulfillment task and the diversion of resources it entails, many workplaces may forego substitute fulfillment despite its desirability.
Substitute fulfillment is a routine practice in the education system, especially at the primary and secondary school levels. An example of substitute fulfillment for a high school teacher is provided herein as an accessible example and for reference. The substitute fulfillment task usually is triggered in a school when a teacher “calls in sick.” Depending on the degree to which substitute fulfillment is automated in the school or district, locating a substitute teacher may require the efforts of a principal or other administrator, as well as several support staff members. Once a teacher has called in sick or otherwise signaled his absence, perhaps the night before or even the morning of the absence, the responsible administrator must disrupt her schedule to focus on the substitute fulfillment task. If she is unable to find a substitute teacher, the operation of the class, the department, and even the whole school may be disrupted. For example, the affected classes may fall behind in their scheduled curricula, an administrator or other teachers may have to neglect their other duties to cover for the absentee, and/or the school may be fined by the state for failing to provide an acceptable substitute teacher.
In order to perform the substitute fulfillment, generally the administrator first must determine which classes the absent teacher teaches and what skills are required of a substitute. For example, if an absent teacher is a high school science teacher who teaches AP Physics and basic chemistry, a substitute may be required not only to have a college degree but also specifically to have pursued college-level classes in both subjects. The administrator may then identify acceptable substitutes from those substitutes registered with the school district. The administrator then telephones potential substitutes to check their availability and willingness to take on the assignment. Often, the administrator may have to telephone an individual substitute several times to speak with the individual substitute and obtain a response. If the administrator locates and confirms a substitute, the administrator then has to inform the relevant school head or other teachers and complete paperwork for processing the substitute assignment.
Presently, computer systems for supporting substitute fulfillment are known in the education field. Individual schools in a school district typically share a single such system installed at the school district level. Typical system equipment includes at least one dedicated computer, combined with specialized telephony equipment, including multiple phone lines, and other equipment. The equipment is expensive and set-up of the substitute fulfillment system may be technically demanding. A school district must invest in equipment adequate to handle its anticipated volume of use. In order to upgrade the system, often all of the equipment must be replaced, at substantial expense and inconvenience.
In these automated systems, necessary information relating to teachers, substitution criteria, registered substitutes, etc., is entered and maintained in a database through software on the system at the school district level. Individual schools may receive daily absence information from the school district office via facsimile. School district personnel must receive absence notification and initiate and oversee the substitute fulfillment procedure with support from the system. Significant involvement by school district personnel and the system vendor may be required, including hardware and software support of the system.
In light of the mission-critical nature of the substitute fulfillment task in the education system, the reliability of the system is a key concern. At present, substitute fulfillment systems are not adequately reliable. Power failures, computer network interruptions, telephone outages, computer system failures, unauthorized tampering, computer security crime, and other catastrophic events may undermine the efficacy of systems operated at the school district level. Because all information is maintained locally at the school district level, system failures may result in partial or total data loss. Backup systems entail additional expense, often not within the budgets of school systems.
Present systems are inherently limited in their capabilities due to equipment limitations, access constraints, and operation requirements; thus, each district typically purchases and installs a system and independently handles its own substitute fulfillment using the purchased system. As a result of the decentralized nature of substitute fulfillment management in present systems, it is virtually impossible for school districts to share information and common substitute fulfillment resources. For the same reason, compilation or aggregation of data relating to substitute fulfillment across school districts is difficult and uncommon. All of the costs, responsibilities, disadvantages, and inconveniences of substitute fulfillment are typically borne exclusively and separately by individual school districts and schools.
Additionally, organizations including but not limited to schools, school districts and business entities require a centralized system and method of tracking workers” absences and entitlements, including but not limited to used and available vacation, personal and sick time. Administrators and workers have a time-consuming, inefficient and often inaccurate procedures for recording absences and entitlements. This results in labor-intensive recordation procedures and often no universal record (for access by both administrators and workers) detailing up-to-date absences and entitlements for the particular worker, a group of workers, or the overall workforce of the organization.
Organizations also require an efficient, current and easily accessible system and method for recording and announcing benefits, policies, current and unexpected events. Presently, organizations often resort to bulletin boards, which are not remotely accessible, or phone chains, which are inefficient, unreliable, and labor-intensive.
Illustrated here with particular examples, these same considerations are generally applicable to any organization. Due to the mission-critical nature of these tasks, it is crucial that any equipment or method relating to substitute fulfillment, information compilation or notification be reliable and efficient. It is an advantage of the present invention to provide a reliable, efficient system and method of substitute fulfillment, information compilation and notification. It is a further advantage of the present invention to provide an automated system and method that has low overhead and requires little organization involvement or oversight. It is another advantage of the present invention to broaden the scope of system connectivity and to include an interface to the Internet. It is yet another advantage of the present invention to maintain a central database of related information and to process data across multiple independent organizations. It is still another advantage of the present invention to provide trend analysis and reporting. A system and method for substitute fulfillment, information compilation and notification is useful to any organization that anticipates a need to assign substitute workers to fill temporary absences.